Live data from Hacker News

The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

employees.theworknumber.com

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

#13
post #5

When you apply for a software job in the US and go through a background check, most of your former employments are verified through The Work Number. As an employee, I'm not aware of a way to opt out of this data collection, and I assume if there is a way, it will surely make the future background check harder. Now that they allow to look at your personal report, I went ahead, registered and requested a copy. This is…

Dear Equifax,

Add to my report that I said: You suuuuckkk!

Re: The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

#14

I guess you don't need to be an authoritarian country. Just capitalist with no regulation...

State consolidates power or a few megacorps. Unfortunately the middle ground (approximate balance of power) is always tenuous

Re: The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

#15
post #3

I see no way this could go wrong at all.

Seems like a souped up credit score? With pretty much all the pros and cons of that existing system.

You can't mention that there are pros and cons and not mention that the cons vastly outweigh the pros, with any credibility.

Re: The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

#16

I guess you don't need to be an authoritarian country. Just capitalist with no regulation...

Big banks growing up around a central bank is not capitalism, it's financialism.

Mandate that any fresh new currency be apportioned and distributed to only living citizens, and a capitalism becomes possible again. As it stands now it's the money printers, and those adjacent, who hold the power.

Giving everyone fresh currency, and taxing those of significant wealth to sop up inflation (corporations and individuals), is how business entities get forced into serving the people again. As it stands now they serve those who have the ability to leverage the printing press, and that's not you or I.

Addendum: finance is not capital. Capital is the structures used to produce goods. Finance in our system is contractual trickery used to represent capital. To pull from Baudrillard: if capital is the land, finance is the map.

Re: The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

#17
post #15
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a souped up credit score? With pretty much all the pros and cons of that existing system.

You can't mention that there are pros and cons and not mention that the cons vastly outweigh the pros, with any credibility.

There are pros for employers, they can hire based on whether a candidate has been punished by other employers before and keep punishing them based on an objective social credit system. And there are cons.

Re: The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

#18
post #5

When you apply for a software job in the US and go through a background check, most of your former employments are verified through The Work Number. As an employee, I'm not aware of a way to opt out of this data collection, and I assume if there is a way, it will surely make the future background check harder. Now that they allow to look at your personal report, I went ahead, registered and requested a copy. This is…

>Nowhere in my employment agreements I did explicitly agree to my paycheck information to be transferred to Equifax, and yet, here we go. Nowhere in US law does it say your employer has to keep any of that information private.

Really? Anf if they took your paystubs, and posted them online? No problems? Nary a one?

Why is Equifax special?

Re: The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

#20
post #15
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a souped up credit score? With pretty much all the pros and cons of that existing system.

You can't mention that there are pros and cons and not mention that the cons vastly outweigh the pros, with any credibility.

I already don't like what I hear about standard American credit scores (but I don't live in the US anyway.)

This seems mostly like more of the same.

Post reply on HN